Interactive session on research environment by Y Liu

Recommended actions in the study

eideyliu — 2025-02-12 09:06:45 UTC

Establish sustainable team-building and training programmes during non-response periods
Long-term support from funders during non-response periods

Recommended actions in the study

eideyliu — 2025-02-12 09:12:33 UTC

Standardise incorporating response-driven work into criteria for doctoral theses and promotion

Recommended actions in the study

eideyliu — 2025-02-12 09:13:39 UTC

Promote leave-taking and respecting work hours
Clarify communication about processes and rewards across career stages
Integrate support roles into research teams
Standardise the onboarding of new team members

Funding from UKHSA

2025-02-13 14:21:25 UTC

UKHSA has several HPRUs on pandemic preparedness including lshtm/imperial on modelling, Birmingham on panprep.

Standard models

2025-02-13 14:22:48 UTC

UKHSA is developing generic model for panprep covering 5 modes of transmission. There should be more standard uk models for diseases including aids, tb, syphilis, flu etc

Additional funding

2025-02-13 14:24:26 UTC

NIHR should fund resilency to academic Centre’s to support response work.

Also, Wellcome could support.

It is important to work on resilency because development funding is going to decrease significantly in near term

Who should decide what teams, and how they should be resourced given funding is finite?

2025-02-13 14:24:59 UTC

Current initiative - theme issue

2025-02-13 14:25:23 UTC

At a global research community level I'm involved with a theme issue proposal for Proc R Soc B on disease modelling on the African Continent aimed at raising the profile of the modelling community in Africa - if you know or work with anyone based in Africa then send them my way!

Recognition of software outputs

2025-02-13 14:25:44 UTC

Difficult to quantify impact of software packages. Not everything is packagable (e.g. bespoke cleaning scripts).

The "real currency" is publications but it is a) hard to convert all software into publication, b) software is poorly cited.

On psychological support, can be differences in provision between staff and students (& what is offered by different institutions)

2025-02-13 14:29:04 UTC

Staff may have access to Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs)
Students may have a separate wellbeing support service.

Bridging models at Glasgow/Manchester/LSHTM

2025-02-13 14:30:37 UTC

We discussed different institutional approaches to 'bridging' after pre-faculty staff end date: 1) 'workforce model', where there is some departmental support to allow pool of staff between postdoc & faculty to react to incoming consultancy requests; 2) dept creates reactive teaching posts (but could instead have staff funded more predictably); 3) staff moving to other projects in the centre/department, which requires large volume of wider groups/projects and can limit reactivity to new response requests.

Making common tasks 'fungible'

2025-02-13 14:35:01 UTC

Traditionally, code pipeline development and application to a specific problem (e.g. outbreak scenarios) is heavily reliant on small number of individuals, who cannot easily handover in real-time (and hence take time off). The more of the code base that is predictable and commonly known (e.g. through training, documentation and interoperability with other common tasks), the easier this would be.

Focus on publications for junior staff

2025-02-13 14:37:51 UTC

Even though response work is not always high profile, the senior staff should keep an eye on the future of the staff on their teams and what they needed for future career steps. Journal prestige is not always as important as having things lodged in the record.

Local contributions + knowledge-sharing

2025-02-13 14:40:36 UTC

Beyond our own teams within universities, I think it's worthwhile establishing best practices for recognising contributions and conducting knowledge-sharing programmes with local individuals on the ground. Ultimately, these are the people affected by many of our studied pathogens, and have knowledge of local factors (including the dynamical and observation processes).

Juniper good for support on this in all areas

2025-02-13 14:41:13 UTC

Especially for smaller groups

Imperial does capacity building

2025-02-13 14:44:36 UTC

Outside of response periods, they do periodic training of staff in the response tools that they have in house so that they are trained and ready to respond if needed.

Encouraging self-care?

2025-02-13 14:47:14 UTC

Some people want to work a lot and it would be "wrong" to stop them. But if people need/want to working hours that MUST be respected.

Prepared pipelines for pre-processing data, software best practices,...

2025-02-13 14:48:35 UTC

I feel that several people did a lot of similar routine work simultaneously (e.g. data pre-processing). Having a clear pipeline prepared could save time at the beginning of an emergency.

get AI to do repetitive tasks

2025-02-13 14:49:39 UTC

Some of the turn-crank work, e.g. weekly reports, short term forecasts, would be automated from now on. Some of this was really where people got burnt out.

Go-Science/Spi-m could be taking a lead on this.

Stepping up of supporting teams

2025-02-13 14:57:20 UTC

Groups such as admin staff, HR, those providing psychological support, etc should be able to be stepped up in line with the researchers

Recognition of non-traditional outputs

2025-02-13 14:57:47 UTC

I hear tell that the next REF will have a stronger push on recognising outputs that are not papers. We as a community surely have done power to push this. Let's!!